Miranda Pearson's exquisite poems in The Fire Extinguisher reveal the individual psyche in a way that is both painstakingly beautiful and generous. No detail is too small to find a place in her constantly shifting vision of how we live in the contemporary world. Conscious of how vulnerable she is in this detached gypsy life many of us are forced to live, she longs for something more stable, more permanent. To find an answer, she travels the globe and asks the question, how do we cope with the unsettled space and the profound solitude that we have come to inhabit? When she has to confront her father's death and her own mortality when she learns she has breast cancer, she finds renewal, comfort and the need to comfort. Out of the ruins, through conflicting and complementary views of the world, she reflects upon the ways poetry and the imagination celebrate the wonders of life.

for when we succeed in feeling nothing,

how do we know what hurts us?